‘Ungrateful’ Indonesian influencer’s video puts scrutiny on public scholarship holders

An Instagram video sparks debate over Indonesian LPDP scholarship awardees' obligations and contributions after studying overseas. Read more at straitstimes.com.

JAKARTA – What do scholarship awardees owe to their benefactors? What does contributing to your country look like? Should a country where only two-thirds of the population have high school education be sending students overseas?

These questions were sparked by an Instagram video by Ms Dwi “Tyas” Sasetyaningtyas, an Indonesian environmental influencer and business owner who now lives in Britain. The video, posted on Feb 13, showed her “unboxing” a British passport for her second child. She expressed her pride and happiness that her child is now officially a British citizen.

“I know the world seems unfair, but let me be the one who bears Indonesian citizenship, not my children,” she said at the end of the now-deleted video.

The comment alone might not have made too many waves – the sentiment is not unusual in Indonesian online spaces, as evidenced by the popularity of the #KaburAjaDulu (Just Run Away First) hashtag in 2025 – had it not turned out that Ms Tyas had been a recipient of the Indonesian government’s Endowment Fund for Education (LPDP) scholarship in 2015.

The fact drew hundreds of negative comments on the video, with many calling out Ms Tyas for her perceived ingratitude towards the country that funded her studies. “I can’t believe that my tax money was used for this,” one commenter said.

The controversy was magnified when internet sleuths discovered that Ms Tyas’ husband, Mr Arya Irwantoro, was also an LPDP awardee, and he had not completed the requirement to return to Indonesia after finishing his master’s and doctoral studies in Europe in 2022.